Note 11 — Chapter I
Albert Heyem Nachmen Baron translation
It is yet, and will probably long remain, an open question whether we can draw any clear distinction between the two kinds of mind here discussed. The author is careful to base his distinction on the "predominance" of the "rational" or of the "imaginative" process. So-called "thinkers," who do nothing, can not, certainly, be ranked with the persons of great intellectual attainment through whose efforts the progress of the world is made; on the other hand, the author seeks to make results or accomplishments the crucial test of true imagination (see Introduction).
As regards the relative value or rank of the two bents of mind there has ever been, and probably forever will be, great difference of opinion. Even in this intensely "practical" age there is an undercurrent of feeling that the narrowly "practical" individual is not the final ideal, and the innermost conviction of many is the same as that of the poet who declares that "a dreamer lives forever, but a thinker dies in a day." (Tr.)